BREAK A LEG, DARLINGS

Veteran author Babson continues to coast, this time with another outing for her wacky duo of aging actresses Trixie Dolan and Evangeline Sinclair (Even Yuppies Die, 1996, etc.). They're still living in an inconvenient apartment in London's Dockland while incessantly searching for pub-theaters for possible acting vehicles. The show at the Happy Larry is one of the more promising, and the two are made much of there by a group of male locals whose chief occupation seems to be some sort of betting game. Sweetums Carew, another out-of-work old-timer, sometimes joins them--until the night she takes a fatal tumble on the pub's steep staircase. Visiting the Green Colleen pub results in another kind of disruption in their lives. The bar's live-in dog, a wolfhound named The Semtex, follows the ladies outside, refuses to go back, and is eventually taken over by their scriptwriter friend Lucy, leaving Trixie to cope with threats of physical violence from Dorsal Finn, the dog's owner. But the real threat, and there is one, comes from another source, and Trixie barely manages to survive it--in a climax that sorts out the mysteries surrounding events in the two pubs. Babson's usual amiable, giddy mixture (lots of glitter, little substance) is likely to be most appreciated by the author's legion of fans.